


Possessed

by Cottonstones



Category: Game Grumps
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Crushes, Demon Summoning, Demonic Possession, F/M, Gen, Occult, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-23
Updated: 2016-10-23
Packaged: 2018-08-24 07:48:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8363935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cottonstones/pseuds/Cottonstones
Summary: Suzy spends her time studying cults, demonic imagery, pondering things that lie just out of view of humanity but that some- maybe Suzy included- believe are fully and completely there, separated from humanity by a thin and invisible barrier. That’s what tonight was about, trying to prod at that natural wall.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was completely inspired by the Ghoul Grumps shirt commercial.

“You’re not afraid, are you?” Suzy asks, her smile flickering across her face in the sputtering light of the nearby candles. The simultaneous flames moving around them casts odd shadows across her pale skin, making dark shapes inch across her jaw, her cheekbones. The shadows moving like living things skittering across the wood floor. 

“No,” Barry says flatly. He doesn’t believe in this stuff. He’s only here because Suzy asked him to be and he’s goddamn terrible at telling Suzy no. “How do we get started?” 

Suzy rolls her eyes, but she flips a page of the heavy, old book in front of her. It’s something she got from an estate sale—the pages thick with dust and that smell of age, worn pages that are thin enough that any rough movements could rip them with ease. 

Currently the two of them are sitting together in a thick ring of salt, their knees brushing every now and then when Barry shifts to get more comfortable. If he had known when he woke up today that he’d end up spending a good majority of the evening sitting in a small circle of space on the floor, he might have opted for something other than skinny jeans. 

Suzy tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and she taps the page in front of her. 

“It says we start by taking one candle each.” 

“That seems easy enough,” Barry says. He reaches within the boundary of their circle and picks up a long cylinder-shaped glass candle. It smells spicy and has a deep red color, but Barry can’t place the scent. The candles were Suzy’s, this whole set-up was Suzy’s, the only thing Barry did was sit his ass down and agree to participate when Suzy begged him. 

Suzy mimics Barry and lifts her own candle, a soft orange color, the glow washing her face in the warm light, illuminating her striking eyes. The dark eyeliner makes her eyes almost look sunken, like black pits flecked with green. In the light of the candle Barry can see the white glint of her teeth as she presses them against the meat of her bottom lip. 

“Now what?” Barry asks. 

“It says ‘to call a spirit, a price must be paid, a human debt’.” 

“What the hell does that mean? This isn’t _Full Metal Alchemist_ I’m not exchanging my body to call a spirit from the otherworld.” 

“Oh, Barry,” Suzy says, humor lacing her voice, and he can’t see her well enough to know for sure, but Barry thinks she’s rolling her eyes at him. “It means blood.” 

“We have to bleed?” Barry asks, growing more unsure about this whole situation, this whole idea. He knows Suzy loves the occult, that she’s fascinated by the darkness, the sense of an entire world hidden from their view. Hell, half of her college classes are focused around creepy shit like that. She spends her time studying cults, demonic imagery, pondering things that lie just out of view of humanity but that some- maybe Suzy included- believe are fully and completely there, separated from humanity by a thin and invisible barrier. That’s what tonight was about, trying to prod at that natural wall. 

Barry is practical, logical, occasionally cynical. He’ll mess around and poke at things, but legitimately trying to summon something sounds like more a risk than he’s prepared for. He’s all for playing with plastic Ouija boards and sitting in graveyards-or in their case, the abandoned wing of their university library- and waiting to ‘talk’ to a ghost, silly shit like that. That’s what he thought he was signing up for, not blood and other more serious acts.

“I’ll do it if you’re scared,” Suzy says. Barry watches with rapt attention as Suzy raises her hand over the candle, something small and silver between her fingers catching the light. It’s a few seconds too late before Barry realizes what she’s doing, what he’s seeing. 

“Suzy!” he chides because Suzy is pressing the slender needle to her finger, breaking the pale skin. Almost instantly he sees the bead of crimson surface to her fingertip. Suzy holds it over a small decorative plate. The droplet grows heavy against her finger before gravity takes hold, and the drop of blood smacks the plate with a wet sound. 

Barry’s stomach rolls. “Let me see,” he says, and he finds her wrist, bringing her hand up near his face. Her skin is warm and smooth in his fingers and her arm vibrates in his hold when she lets out a little laugh. 

“It was a tiny poke,” she says. “Barry, I’m fine.” 

He knows she probably is, but he can smell copper, and he’s never been exactly squeamish but a queasy feeling settles inside of him and won’t let go. He wants to press his lips to the wound, like she’s a child and a kiss is a cure-all. But she isn’t a child, and she isn’t his to be kissing. They are friends, through and through, and maybe Barry is here because he just likes spending time with her, indulging her in her silly whims, her peculiar hobbies. He likes her laugh and when her eyes are bright because she’s so excited about whatever she’s telling him. To say he has a crush feels childish and stupid but he can’t think of a different word for it now.

She does the same for him, like when she comes to the café near their college campus to watch him play ukulele or when he can convince her to stop by his dorm after class to play a new, weird game he picked up off Amazon. When they spend Sunday nights watching Game Of Thrones on Barry’s couch, curled together, close enough to share warmth but not touching too intimately. They are best friends and Barry loves that, needs it, needs her to keep him centered in the otherwise stressful world of college academics.

“Do you have a second needle?” Barry says.

“Barry,” Suzy says, her tone turning soft and gentle. She slips her wrist away from his hands. “You don’t have to.” 

“If you did it, I should too, right? Make it more powerful or something?” He’s babbling, unsure if what he’s saying even makes sense. He doesn’t believe in this crap, but at the same time he’s nervous to contribute, just the same as he’s nervous to let her do it on her own, to have her blood be the only kind of offering. 

“It’s okay, B, really,” Suzy says. She reaches out and touches his knee, her palm warm against his skin, he can feel it even through the thick layer of denim he’s wearing. 

Barry knows it’s pointless to argue with Suzy. She’s stubborn to a fault, strong headed and once she’s made up her mind there is very little he can do to get her to change it. He nods once not agreeing with her choice but accepting that it was made. 

“What’s next then?” 

“There’s some words here,” Suzy says, lifting the thick book into her slender lap, “I can’t really make them out.” 

“Let me see,” Barry says. If he can’t help her via his , he can contribute with his brains. He takes the book when Suzy carefully offers it to him, Barry almost cradling it as if it were a child, something he needed to protect. He looks to the page Suzy had been studying, the handwriting messy and small. Barry is surprised Suzy could read it at all. “It kinda looks like Chinese?” Barry says. “But some of the characters are strange.” 

“What? Really? It didn’t look like that to me.” 

Barry scans the page again, flowing from the top where Suzy had been reading. He can barely make out the words there, the characters looking like mangled Chinese. 

“Suze, how did you read this?” 

“What do you mean?” Suzy asks. 

“It’s not English.” 

“Yes, it is.” 

Then Suzy is in Barry’s space, leaning over him, the long tendrils of her hair brushing his wrists, he can smell the earthy scent of her shampoo. Suzy looks down at the page where Barry is reading. 

“See, it’s English,” Suzy says, tapping the page. 

Barry doesn’t see, because it isn’t, not to him at least. He looks up at Suzy, their faces close and he bites his lip. 

“Barry?” Suzy asks. 

“It’s…nothing, never mind,” Barry says, “I think I can read it.” it’s all he can do. His Chinese is rusty and there are a ton of characters he doesn’t know. His skill is probably too low for this, but he wants to help Suzy out, wants to do good for her, impress her, wants her to have fun and feel like they tried their best on this little venture, “Um, call for…the night? Sp-Spirit open? I think this one means mirror but I could be wrong. Ah, know the…the soul…of…companions? Know yourself?” 

Barry sets the book down feeling more embarrassed at the shit job he did of deciphering the text than anything else. Suzy doesn’t seem disappointed. She nods as if taking the words as fact, as a truth. Barry is relieved and terrified that she trusts him as much as she does. 

“I think I remember it,” Suzy says. Barry sits with the book on his lap as Suzy rattles off near the exact thing he had read to her, except she makes no awkward pauses, never once stumbles. She speaks clear and firm and sure, like she’s read this passage one hundred times over. 

Barry skips to the next step, their new instructions. The next portion of text tells them to hold their designated candles, to link their own hands, count to three and then blow their candles out simultaneously. Barry explains this to Suzy, and he’s an adult, he shouldn’t be blushing about holding Suzy’s hand, yet the thought makes his face warm. 

“Do you want to stop?” Barry asks. 

“No way,” Suzy says,. “We’re so close.” 

“Who are you trying to contact anyway?” Barry asks. 

She had never explained to him why she was wanting to contact a spirit, to try and draw it into conversation. Maybe he felt it wasn’t his place to question why she had set all this up in the abandoned wing of their university’s library. Barry sort of went with the flow, blaming it on the season, the infusion of fall and Halloween right around the corner, but now, seeing that it’s less playing with an Ouija board at a sleepover and more the opening scene to a horror movie, he’s curious. 

“What’s your end game here, Suze?” 

“No one in particular,” she shrugs, “I just think it would just be cool to contact the other side. I’m not sure it all exists. I can think about it and experiment with it but I can’t be sure there’s anything there, but I think it’s exciting to try, don’t you?” Her eyes are dazzling in the glittery light of the candles, her smile huge and eager and Barry’s heart pangs loudly in his chest.

“I guess so?” 

“I’ll take it,” Suzy says with a laugh. He watches her pick up her candle, and Barry mimics her movement, holding his own close to him as they had done earlier. Then Suzy holds out her hand, the one she had pricked with the needle. Barry swallows before he takes it. 

Her palm is warm and dry against his own and Barry holds on just this side of firm, just to make sure he knows they are linked just as the book had said. Maybe he feels a little bit safer knowing he’s holding on to her, like nothing can touch them if they are linked together. 

“Don’t be nervous,” Suzy tells him. “Spirits can pick up on nerves. Plus, the salt circle will keep us safe.” 

“Are you sure about that?” Barry asks. He can barely believe that he’s seriously considering that this will even work at all. It’s their environment and the atmosphere and Suzy rubbing off on him, affecting his common sense. 

“Trust me, okay?” she says. 

He does. He always has. Barry nods. “Okay, Suze.” 

She gives his hand a squeeze and then she shakes her head, as if re-focusing herself. The glass of the candle is hot in Barry’s palm, as warm as Suzy’s in his other. 

“One.” Suzy begins and Barry feels his heart speed up. 

“Two.” He can still smell the copper of her blood. 

“Three.” Barry and Suzy blow their candles out at the same time. 

There are other candles, smaller ones, flickering around them so they aren’t plunged into complete darkness, but without the two largest ones the room is considerably darker. For a moment Barry is glad to be holding Suzy’s hand, as her face is much harder to make out now.

The spell or summoning or whatever the fuck this all was meant to do is supposed to take place. Barry had thought it would be an instant thing, like flicking a light switch. He can smell the heady scent of dying candles wafting between them. In the quiet his heart beats so loud. He wills his hand not to sweat in hers. 

Barry is about to ask how long they have to wait for the spell to take effect when suddenly the small decorative metal plate containing Suzy’s blood bursts into flames—wild dancing, raging flames engulfing the surface.

Barry gasps. Somewhere in their surprise their hands slip apart. 

“Holy shit,” Barry breathes, but before more can be said there is a popping sound like a gunshot, like an explosion, and there is light, a blinding white light, the ground shaking around them, rattling the nearby shelves and littering ancient books along the floor, each one landing with a loud thud. 

Barry hears Suzy scream and he’s quick to find her amid the chaos, getting his arms around her and tugging her close to him. Their heads are bowed together, his body trying to protect hers, but Barry doesn’t know what he’s trying to keep away. All he can think is:

‘What did we do?’ 

‘What did we do?’

‘What did we _do_?’

Just as suddenly as it all begins, the madness is over. Barry can breathe as the room settles around them. He can’t believe what had happened. Can’t believe that he and Suzy did _something_ , though he’s not sure what. Slowly, carefully, he peels himself away from Suzy, not wanting to be too far away. In the chaos, their other candles had gone out. The decorative plate is a charred and melted mess against the wood floor. Barry sees no spirits, no ethereal beings shivering and shimmering before them. The light he had seen, blinding and bright was now gone, leaving nothing behind. 

“Suzy, are you okay?” Barry asks, surprised at the nerves in his voice, how his hands are shaking despite himself. “What the hell just happened?” 

He’s greeted with silence next to him and Barry swallows. 

“Suzy?” he reaches out and touches her shoulder, her skin warm through her t-shirt. 

Suzy looks at him finally, eyes a sickening and unnatural shade of brilliant blue. A smile that is neither kind nor gentle is twisted across her lovely face. A voice that only sounds like Suzy’s in passing but has none of her inflection, none of her sweet tone, greets him. 

“Guess again.”


End file.
